


will you still be here

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fluffy Angst, Gen, Modern AU, Runaway AU, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:20:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: “Have you seen Arafinwë?” Finwë sounds not quite frantic, which from Finwë means that behind the phone he’s panicking.Fëanáro can hear papers rustling through the phone. He almost feels guilty for lying.





	will you still be here

“Have you seen Arafinwë?” Finwë sounds not quite frantic, which from Finwë means that behind the phone he’s panicking. 

Fëanáro can hear papers rustling through the phone. He almost feels guilty for lying. “Indis’s youngest? I haven’t, no, is he gone?”

“He’s been gone for a week,” Finwë says. “We fought before he left — we called Olwë first, he didn’t know anything but I thought maybe he might have said something to you, he would have been old enough to remember when you left —” and perhaps Finwë doesn’t realize how painful that topic is or perhaps he just doesn’t care — “Curufinwë, please, has he sent you anything, has he called —”

“No and no.” Fëanáro glances over at the sleeping teenager on the sofa. “I’m sorry, I haven’t heard anything.”

Finwë lets out a breath, somewhere between a sigh and a sob. “Thank you,” he says, and hangs up.

Fëanáro puts the phone down. He considers waking Arafinwë to tell him their father called, but instead pulls a blanket over him and lets him keep sleeping.

There’ll be time enough in the morning.

  
  


“You should call Finwë,” Fëanáro says over breakfast in the morning.

Arafinwë looks at him wide-eyed, his shoulders gone tight and his face statue-still. “I’m not going to go back,” he says.

Fëanáro knows defiance when he hears it and this isn’t it — Arafinwë is as scared as Finwë was. “You don’t have to tell him where you are. I won’t tell him where you are.” Arafinwë looks a little bit less tense now, but the doe-eyed fear is still in his face. “But he called me last night asking if I’d seen you and he was panicking, you know how he gets when he can’t find someone. You should call.” 

Arafinwë nods slowly, then looks down at his eggs. “I’ll do that,” he says. He’s quieter than he was before. Fëanáro thinks maybe there is nothing he can say about this to anyone that won’t make him wish he hadn’t.

He doesn’t share the thought, of course.

  
  


“Hey,” Arafinwë says into the phone, his voice uncertain but not quite shaky. Fëanáro stands in the doorway, close enough that Arafinwë knows he’s there but not so close that Arafinwë will stutter and dart his eyes to and from Fëanáro’s face.

“Yeah,” Arafinwë says, almost neutral. “Yeah, I’m safe, you don’t have to worry — no.” He goes abruptly flat and stone-cold. “I’m not coming back and I am not telling you where I am, I’m safe, that’s enough.”

There’s a long silence while Finwë speaks, not loudly enough that Fëanáro can hear what he’s saying.

“You said,” Arafinwë says finally, “that if I disappeared, you wouldn’t even bother to look for me, because that was how little I meant to you, if that was how little this family meant to me.” His voice is shaking now. Fëanáro doesn’t bother to hide the horror on his face; Arafinwë’s eyes are closed.

There’s another pause. Arafinwë swallows visibly, then swallows again.

“I know,” he says. “I know, you didn’t mean it, you certainly didn’t mean it as a promise, it was a threat and an empty one, you were never going to follow through, you love me and you just want me to come home, I have in fact been reading your texts. But you did still say it. And I’m holding you to it.”

Dead silence, on both ends. Fëanáro holds utterly still.

“And you don’t know where I am,” Arafinwë says finally, “and I’m not telling you, so the point is moot anyway.” He pulls the phone away from his ear and hits the power button with distinctly more force than necessary. “That did not go as badly as it could have,” he says, conversationally, as if he hadn't just — 

Fëanáro adjusts his face into something less horrified. “Even if he showed up here I’d claim I hadn’t seen you,” he says, and then, “I’m sorry I made you call, I didn’t think he had said,” and he doesn't finish the sentence. 

“Of course not, you’re the favorite,” Arafinwë says crisply, and then his face twists. “Fuck, I’m going to start crying right about now.”

What could anyone say in response to that?

Fëanáro holds out his arms and Arafinwë collapses into them, sobbing, and they stand holding each other in Fëanáro’s kitchen, the phone sitting black and silent on the counter. 


End file.
